Dead Mrs Stratton (Jumping Jenny)

CHAPTER V SEARCH PARTY

IT WAS a minute or so before half - past two when Dr. Chalmers presented himself again in the ballroom.

"Oh, hang!" observed Mrs. Chalmers, with even less tact than she knew. "I'm going to finish this dance anyhow," she called across the room.

Dr. Chalmers nodded pleasantly as he shut the ballroom door behind him.

Roger, alone at the moment, strolled across the room and joined him.

"Have a drink, Chalmers? You look as if you could do with one."

"I could," admitted Dr. Chalmers with a smile. "It was quite cold driving. But I think I'll wait till my wife's gone to put her things on. Otherwise we'll never get off. You know what women are."

They waited till the dance was over.

"Now, Lucy," said Dr. Chalmers, with good - humoured firmness.

"Oh, no, Phil," pleaded Mrs. Chalmers.

"Now come along, my dear," said Dr. Chalmers.

"But Margot isn't here. I must say good - night to her."

"Off with you, woman! Margot will be back by the time you've got your things on."

Mrs. Chalmers, who had known it was hopeless all the time, consented to go.

"Now, Sheringham, what about that drink?" said Dr. Chalmers. They strolled into the other room, to the bar.

Dr. and Mrs. Mitchell decided that it was high time for them to go too, and husband and wife divided in the same directions as the Chalmers. The other dancers, realizing that the party was breaking up, drifted automatically towards the bar.

"Oh, there you are, Mike," said Margot Stratton. "I was looking for you. We'd better go too, I suppose."

"Had a good party, Margot?" asked her late husband.

"A marvellous party, Ronald, thank you."

"It's been a grand party," Colin Nicolson chimed in. "Have another drink before you go, Margot."

"Well, it is getting cold out now," Margot agreed.

Mike Armstrong said nothing.

"Wonderful, our Margot, isn't she?" Dr. Chalmers appealed to Roger. "Getting on for three in the morning, and not a hair out of place. I believe if Margot was in a liner that sunk, she'd be found sitting on a lifebelt, perfectly powdered and waved, and looking as if she'd stepped straight out of a bandbox."

"Thank you, Phil," said Margot affably.

"Ha, ha," said Mike Armstrong suddenly and blushed.

"What was that you said just now, Colin?" asked Mr. Williamson thoughtfully. "Another drink, eh? Was that it? Well, that's not a bad idea. Eh? That isn't a bad idea at all, is it?"

"It's a magnificent idea, Osbert."

"It is," affirmed Mr. Williamson, much struck. "It is a munificent idea, Colin. Mine's whiskey."

"Oh, Osbert," said Mrs. Williamson tentatively, "do you really think you'd better?"

"I said, mine's a whiskey," repeated Mr. Williamson firmly. "Yes, and make it a double one. Thanks, Colin. Well, cheerio, Margot!"

"Cheerio, Osbert."

"Osbert, you are awful," said Mr. Williamson's wife and removed herself, somewhat huffily.

The women took their usual time to get their things on, delayed in this case longer than usual by the arrival of Margot Stratton in the bedroom just as they were ready to leave. At last, however, they presented themselves, cloaked and befurred, and the chorus of farewells arose.

"Well, good - night, Ronald. . . . It's been a lovely party. . . . Good - night, Mr. Sheringham... . Good - night, I'll ring you up tomorrow. . . . Perhaps you and Ronald would dine with us one night, Mrs. Lefroy? . . . Say good - night to Mrs. Williamson for me. . . . Don't forget that book you promised me, Mr. Nicolson. . . . Well, goodnight, Sheringham. . . . Good - night. . . . It's been a marvellous party, Ronald, darling. . . . Well, good - night. . . ."

At last and at last only the house party remained.

"We are seven," said Ronald, looking round the circle of faces. "Or should be, I think. Do we go to bed, or not? I think not. Then help yourselves to more drinks, everyone, and be merry. Seven has always struck me as absolutely the ideal number for a party." The party complied.

"I don't want to dance any more," announced Mr. Williamson, suddenly and weightily.

"No," agreed Mrs. Lefroy. "Let's turn out the lights and sit round the fire, while Mr. Sheringham tells us about his murders."

"Oh, yes, Roger!" said Celia with enthusiasm.

"That's a good idea," Ronald backed them up. "In the strictest confidence, Roger, of course."

"I really ought not," said Roger happily.

"Oh, do, Mr. Sheringham!" begged Mrs. Lefroy.

"Come along, Roger, be a man," added Colin Nicolson. "It won't go any further."

"Oh, very well," said Roger.

Mr. Williamson went to the landing and roared like a bull.

"LILIAN!"

"Hullo?" came a faint and distant voice.

"You're wanted!"

"What for?"

"MURDER!" howled Mr. Williamson and left it at that. Certainly it brought him his Lilian, hotfoot; but then he had all the bother of explaining.

In the meantime chairs were being pulled into a semicircle round the fire which still glowed on the big open Jacobean hearth, and the party settled down to enjoy itself.

"Sheringham!" said Mr. Williamson, in a confidential tone.

"Hullo?"

"Before you begin, will you promise me one thing?"

"What?"

"That if I murder Lilian, you won't give me away. You won't, will you? Eh?"

"That," said Roger, "depends entirely on the amount of provocation you've had."

"Oh, I've had plenty. You see," said Mr. Williamson, still more confidentially, "I can't bear her wearing my trousers." And having delivered himself of this complaint, Mr. Williamson leaned back in his chair and instantly went to sleep.

"Carry on, Sheringham," Ronald Stratton ordered comfortably.

Roger was clearing his throat while he wondered on which case to begin, when a voice from the doorway checked him. It was David Stratton, changed and in a lounge suit.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but can I speak to you a minute, Ronald?"

Ronald was only out of the room for a couple of minutes before he returned with his brother.

"David says Ena doesn't seem to have gone home. He thinks she may still be here. We're just going to have a look round."

"Magnificent!" said Nicolson, jumping up "We'll help you."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," David demurred. "Don't you bother. Ronald and I can manage."

"Not a bit of it; of course we'll give you a hand. Come along, Osbert, you lazy devil."

"Eh? What? What's up?"

"Hide - and - seek," said Nicolson. "You're seeking. Get up and do it." Under his rousing energy the whole party was stirred into action.

Roger noticed that after a first few moments of uncertainty, everyone seemed to be taking the search as a huge joke. Even David's deprecatory air did not check the growing hilarity. No doubt it was the best way to treat the situation, and really, for David's own sake, the most tactful. It was no good going about with long faces, silently sympathizing with the unfortunate Stratton in his possession of an almost insane wife. Ena was after all a joke, if rather a bad one. Come out in the open and laugh with David, instead of weeping with him.

In twos and threes the search party worked through the various rooms. Ronald Stratton's house was Jacobean and spacious. It had belonged to the Stratton family for nearly three hundred years, almost ever since its erection as the dower house of a mansion nearly six miles away. Ronald had inherited it, but not the land and the farms which had once belonged to it, or the money to keep it up properly. He had made the latter and bought back the former.

Since it had come into his hands Ronald had spent a great deal on it. In a thoroughly dilapidated condition, it had been actually in danger of collapsing altogether. Ronald had reroofed it, re - planned it, and almost rebuilt it. The top of the three stories, where the party had been held, had been completely reorganized by him. Originally this had consisted of almost a dozen small bedrooms; Ronald had ruthlessly knocked more than half of these into one huge room, running from front to back of the house, and one other almost as big; the former, with a parquet floor added, had become the ballroom; the other, with one of its walls knocked completely out to open onto the lovely well staircase, was anything from a studio to a music room. Tonight it had done duty as a bar parlour. The rest of the top floor, served by another staircase, constituted the servants' quarters.

Ronald had been as ruthless with the roof as with the top story. He had kept only the main gables in the front of the house. The rest he had levelled and put in a concrete roof with an asphalt surface, which was just large enough for a badminton court. The game was a little windy at such a height, but Ronald played it with zest. This evening the net and posts had been stowed away and the rather gruesome triple gallows erected in their place. Over a subsidiary roof, a few feet lower than the main roof and reached from it by a short flight of steps, had been erected a fair - sized hothouse, where Stratton amused himself with growing certain exotic plants, or, it might be more accurate to say, trying to grow them. It was called the sun parlour and furnished with wicker chairs and tables, and was usually in considerable use at dances.

As for the rest of the house, the main bedrooms and bathrooms occupied the first floor; while the library and a small morning room opened off one side of the big hall on the ground floor, the drawing room off the other. The kitchens were stowed away somewhere at the back, with access to the hall and, through a service door, to the dining room.

To search such a house thoroughly was no small task. At first the party confined itself to the top floor and the roof, in spite of the extreme unlikelihood of the lady being stowed away in either. Roger himself felt a little perfunctory in his seeking. He had no expectation that Mrs. Stratton really was still on the premises. Most probably she had gone off to wake up some unfortunate friend and explain, with sobs and heroic gestures, and complete untruth, that her husband had practically barred her own door against her.

Nevertheless, slightly annoyed as he was at having been cut short so abruptly in his story - telling, his sense of the picturesque appreciated the appropriateness of its setting for such a search. The heavy oak beams which formed the fireplace opening and studded the unevenly plastered walls gleamed with age and generations of elbow grease as they threw back the red glow of the log fire; and the carefully placed electric lights left the quaint angles of the ceiling, which Ronald had thrown up from its original seven feet to a dozen or more to show off the roof timbers, dim and mysterious. On the outside walls long casement windows, with the original tiny diamond panes of greenish, much - scratched glass, heavily leaded, looked out over the blackness which covered that part of the grounds lying between the house and the main road a hundred yards away. Roger opened one and leaned out. Everything was still and remote and obscure. It was odd to remember that London was within eighteen miles.

"Now then, Roger. She's not out there, you know. Why, man, this ought to be a job after your own heart."

Roger drew back guiltily and looked round.

"Well, you see, Colin, I don't believe she's here at all."

"What does that matter?" demanded Nicolson robustly. "A game of hide - and - seek's a game of hide - and - seek, wherever the person's hiding. Off with you, and search like a man."

"Has anyone tried the sun parlour?" Roger asked languidly.

"I expect so, but no one of your skill. Who knows? She may have dug into the big bed and be disguised as a sweet - pea by now."

"More probably a cactus," said Roger sourly and went up to look.

Electric light was laid on to the sun parlour, but the place was in darkness when Roger reached it. He was about to turn on the switch, when a slight movement on the farther side of the room made him jump violently. There is nothing more disconcerting than a human movement in the darkness when one has been quite sure there is nothing human there. The next instant he smiled.

"I've got her!" he said to himself.

He could see now the figure whose movement had startled him. It was leaning out of an opened window, just as he had been leaning out of the room below two minutes ago, and evidently it had not heard his approach. It was small and slight, and quite obviously feminine.

"I've a jolly good mind to smack her hard, as she stands," thought Roger vindictively. "She deserves a fright."

It was Roger, however, who got the fright; for the figure shifted its position slightly, and Roger saw that it was not a woman at all. The faint moonlight gave just enough illumination to throw up the whitewashed wall underneath the windows, and Roger could now see white wall between the figure's legs. Moreover those legs were clothed in unmistakable trousers.

Roger stared at it with something like alarm. No man in the party was nearly so small or so slight as that. Who on earth could it be? He solved the problem by switching on the light - and the rather witchlike face of Mrs. Williamson shot round over her shoulder with a little exclamation.

"Oh, how you frightened me!"

"Not before you'd already frightened me. I thought you must be an elf or a hobgoblin or something, brooding out of that window."

Mrs. Williamson laughed. "The night was so perfect. I simply had to get away from everyone and drink a little of it in."

'Funny,' thought Roger; 'she can say that sort of thing and one accepts it, because she's natural, whereas exactly the same words from Ena Stratton would sound just nauseating.'

"I'm sorry I disturbed you," he said. "I was sent by Colin, to search this place."

"She's not here. I looked round before I turned the light out. All I could find here was someone's pipe." She nodded towards one of the wicker tables, on which lay a brier pipe.

Roger picked it up. "I expect someone's missing this. I'd better take it to Ronald."

"They haven't found her yet, then?"

"No. I suppose I must go and help look. Shall I turn out the light again and leave you and the night together?"

"No, I feel better now. Do people ever make you feel like that - that you simply must get away from everybody, to get the bad taste out of your mouth?"

"I can quite believe that Ena Stratton would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth," said Roger, as he stood aside for Mrs. Williamson to precede him up the steps.

In the house the search had now spread to the lower floors.

Roger could hear Colin Nicolson, in one of the bedrooms, protesting his fears to his hostess.

"It's no good, Celia, I won't be able to get a wink of sleep tonight, and that's the truth. Each time I shut an eye I'll imagine the pestilential woman ready to pop out at me from every nook and cranny." He pulled open the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and peered hopefully inside.

"Well, I don't suppose she's in there," said Celia, somewhat literally.

"Who knows what she may not have squeezed herself into?" Colin lifted the lid of a powder box, which happened to be that of Mrs. Lefroy, on the dressing table, and then opened the door of an extremely small cupboard in the wall into which one could with difficulty have squeezed a top hat. "Hey, I see you! Come oot now, will you? Come away oot! Ach, who knows where she is?"

"Curse the woman," said Celia with feeling. "I want to go to bed. I'm simply dropping."

"It's a bit thick. It is really. Besides, Roger's sure she isn't here. Can't we call it off and all get to our beds?"

"David really is rather worried," Celia said doubtfully.

"Why is he worried? He ought to be glad to be rid of her for a bit."

"He doesn't know what she might do, you see."

"And isn't that just playing her own game? Why do you think she's hiding like this at all and giving us all this bother looking for her? Just to make herself important, of course. She just wants us to be bothered about her, and here we are, playing her game. It's sickening, that's what it is."

"Colin, Colin, what's this?" said Roger, walking into the room. "You, who were hounding us all on, to be fainting by the roadside like this!"

"Ah, a joke's a joke, but this is too much. Here's poor Celia dropping with fatigue, and all of us wanting our beds. No, it's too much. Besides, we're just playing the woman's own game."

"Yes, that's her idea, of course; you're perfectly right. She must be the centre of the picture, even when she isn't in it. I agree, we'd much better go to bed."

"Well, then, where's wee Ronald?"

"Wee Ronald's downstairs, I think, with wee David, having a look round there," said Celia.

"Very well, let's go down and tell him we've struck. Come along and back me up, Roger."

"But don't be too hard on David," said Celia, as the two men went out of the room. "It isn't the poor lad's fault, and it's a rotten position for him."

"It's certainly a rotten position for David," Roger agreed to Colin outside, "having to admit tacitly to a lot of strangers that he's got an imbecile for a wife. Very rotten."

"Ach, why doesn't he give the woman a sound thrashing? That's what she needs. A jolly good hiding."

"I'd like to have the administering of it," wistfully said Roger, who also would have liked to get to bed.

Ronald and David were discovered in the hall outside the morning room. They looked at the two inquiringly.

"No luck," said Roger. "Honestly, Ronald, I don't think she's here. Better call the search off, don't you think?"

"Yes, I think so. I'm sure we've looked everywhere now, David."

"All right," David nodded. "Can I use your telephone before I go?"

"Whom on earth do you want to telephone to at this time of night?"

"The police."

"Oh, come, Stratton," Roger said, with a slight smile. "That's hardly necessary, is it?"

"You don't know my wife, Sheringham," David Stratton said ruefully. "In these moods of hers she simply isn't responsible. I wouldn't put anything past her."

"You mean, she might walk into the pond at Westerford and pretend to drown herself?" said Ronald.

"For all one knows, she might actually drown herself."

"Then for heaven's sake, man," said Ronald fervently, "let her. Don't raise one little finger to stop her from such a blessed action."

"I won't," David Stratton said candidly. "But I've got to cover myself."

"How?"

"By warning the police that there's a woman loose who isn't responsible for her actions. Don't you agree that I should, Sheringham?"

"Yes," said Roger. "I don't for one moment think that she's in the least likely to do any such thing, but it certainly won't do any harm to warn the police; and if you tell your wife later that you felt you had to do so, and why, it may give her the fright which, if you'll allow me to say so, she very badly needs."

"Yes," said David briefly. "I'd thought of that."

"All right," Ronald nodded. "Well, you know where the telephone is, David."

David disappeared in the direction of the morning room, and the others loitered in the hall, waiting for him.

"We'll give the poor lad a stiff nightcap before he goes off into the jaws of his doom," Ronald remarked.

"Yes, it's ten to one that he'll find her there when he gets home this time. And I hope he deals with her faithfully. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Williamson found this pipe on the table in the sun parlour. Someone left it there, I suppose. You'd better take charge of it, Ronald."

Ronald glanced at it before he dropped it into his pocket.

"Oh, yes, I know whose this is. It's Phil Chalmers'."

"Just a final nightcap, everyone," said Ronald, as he went towards the bar. "No dissentients, I hope?"

There appeared to be no dissentients. "Do you really think you'd better, Osbert?" doubtfully suggested Mrs. Williamson.

Williamson gazed at her with owlish disapproval. "Are you trying to drive me to drink, Lilian? Don't you know that's absolutely the surest way of making a man drink when he doesn't want to, practically hinting that . . . Isn't it, Sheringham?"

"Absolutely," said Roger.

"Then give me a double," said Mr. Williamson.

Mr. Williamson lurched slightly as he trod on a last step that wasn't there, before emerging on the roof. The others were still finishing their nightcaps, but a sudden craving for fresh air had invaded Mr. Williamson. Fresh air and plenty of it, and space for a man to sway in, was what Mr. Williamson wanted.

He stood just outside the doorway that gave egress to the roof, his back propped against the lintel, and contemplated with some disapproval the gallows in the middle. The lantern which had crowned it had gone out long since, but the gallows itself, and its three grisly occupants, stood out clearly against the moonlit sky.

"Dam' silly idea," commented Mr. Williamson sternly. "Dam' silly. Some people wouldn't like it at all. Some people would dislike it very much. Morbid. Thass word. Morbid. And damsilly."

He set out towards the railing on the other side of the roof, the same railing over which Roger and Ena Stratton had leaned earlier in the evening. It was a railing which seemed to invite leaning. To lean over it now seemed to Mr. Williamson the height of admirable ideas. Leaning is so much less trouble than standing.

It was not really necessary for Mr. Williamson to walk right through the gallows in order to reach the railing. He could quite easily have gone round it. But Mr. Williamson was full of ideas just at present, and to walk right under the middle of the triple gallows seemed a positively brilliant idea. By that gesture he would be able to express all sorts of things; what sort of things did not matter; Mr. Williamson would be able to express them. He steered carefully round a chair that was lying in his path to self - expressionism.

In the same way, it seemed to Mr. Williamson an equally clever idea to halt, right in the middle of the gallows, and hiccough his contempt of them; so halt he did, not without a bit of a lurch. Recovering himself from the lurch, Mr. Williamson happened to knock, quite gently, into one of the dangling figures. The figure, swinging back, promptly dealt him a shrewd buffet in the side.

"Hey!" said Mr. Williamson resentfully.

Mr. Williamson was not drunk. Or, if he had been drunk, he very quickly became almost sober. It was less than half a minute before he realized that it was a very shrewd buffet indeed to have been delivered by a straw figure.

He stared up at the figure in question. Even then Mr. Williamson did not lose his head. He turned round and walked, with some care and extreme dignity, down into the barroom. There he grasped Roger Sheringham by the elbow and drew him firmly aside.

"I say, Sheringham, just come with me a minute, will you? Eh? Just come with me a minute."

"Where to?" Roger asked good - humouredly.

"Just with me. Just in here. Eh? Just come with me."

With great deliberation Mr. Williamson led him into the exact middle of the ballroom floor.

"I say, Sheringham."

"Well?"

"I've found her," said Mr. Williamson.